Breaking down on a country road is never any fun, and in fact, it borders on a nightmare.

It happened to me once when we’d been out for a day with friends and living in the country we had to travel distances to get to our destination through country that was sparsely populated and a long way from anywhere.

On the way home my car stopped running. I had my wife and kids in the back, stopped on the side of the road, my friends oblivious to my predicament as they were travelling ahead of us.

Knowing not much more than where to put the petrol and oil the cars stopping had me worried. This I might add was in the days before mobile phones.

I did as one does in those circumstances and lifted the bonnet to make it appear as though I had a car issue and that maybe I knew what I was doing.

Out of nowhere, a car stopped, and two guys approached and asked me what the problem was. A silly question when you think of it, as I had no idea.

But these two guys listened to me and quickly saw the problem. They knew something about how to get me going again. Within a few short moments they the car going, they had performed some form of magic by shifting one thing to another place and telling me to go to a garage the next day and have the temporary measure they put in place fixed permanently.

Much to my relief, our onward journey continued, and we arrived home to our visitors wondering where we had gotten to.

I’ve often wondered who those men were as they were guardian angels that day.